At times bees, bears, and Bibles all had a place in our activities in a single day. Father had brought honeybees from Vermont, and had kept increasing the number of his hives until he had from fifteen to twenty in our orchard. He was skillful in hiving them when they swarmed, but sometimes a swarm would escape into the woods. Eventually, as new colonies were produced by those which had found homes in hollow trees, there were bee-trees to be found all about us, some near and other very distant.

Father became expert in lining and finding bee-trees. On his trips to inspect his bear traps he carried his bee-box with him, and was on the alert for honeybees gathering their golden store from wild flowers. After he had captured a bee in one section of his box, Father could draw a slide which would admit the apis to a glass-covered space in which some honey was stored. The bee, entranced by his rich find, would forget his fright and load up with all he could carry. The little box would be taken to some open space, and the glass cover slowly withdrawn so that the worker could fly home to his queen. To find direction, the bee had to circle around a few times before heading for its secret tree. With keen eyesight, Father would watch the take-off, and then try to follow the general course of the bee.

To judge the distance of a tree, one good way was to put honey where the bees could return for more. If the released bee was prompt in returning for another cargo, it was proof that he did not have to fly very far. Another method was to watch the route the bee took, then capture him again and carry him some distance to the right or to the left of the main line, releasing him from the new position. This procedure often provided a crossline which indicated the general location of the tree. Of course, if the bee-tree happened to be far away, or if bees from other trees were in the vicinity, the bee-hunter sometimes had a difficult task in locating his prize.

There was one swarm of Italian bees which eluded Father and other bee-hunters for several years. The fact that these bees seemed to be very numerous and remarkably industrious indicated that the swarm was a large one, and one with a rich store of honey for the lucky man who could find it. Consequently, there was keen competition in the search. Bees were caught and released from many different angles, and sharp human eyes peered into hundreds of trees, but no one was able to get a crossline on those bees, or to see them going in and out of any hole or crack in a tree. It was evident, moreover, that they had come from a long distance for their free honey.

The bears, however, had better luck. They either smelled honey, or heard the buzzing of bees in a large dead basswood tree far away from the paths of men. They had found that by standing on their hind legs and reaching a paw through an aperture in the hollow tree they could claw out bits of the delectable sweets. The stings they received as penalty for the thievery did not deter them from beating a path to that particular tree.

Father was more fortunate that the other bee bee-hunters for, in his search for ginseng, he came across the bear trail which led to the honey tree. In fact, judging from the fresh large and small tracks around the old tee, it was apparent that a mother bear had recently been pawing out a tasty treat for her cubs.

After Father had cut down that large shell of a tree, he found so much honey inside that he and my two brothers had to make several trips to bring it all back home. I was old enough to go with them on the last day, and I remember how tired I got, going and coming, and how the angry bees chased and stung me. Yet it was like a holiday to leave the haying and hoeing for the excursion into the forest. And we were well-paid for our efforts, for we got over three hundred pounds of strained honey from that tree. Father spoke of the Land of Canaan which once flowed with milk and honey; and, because of the part that bears had played in making a trail to the tree, he reminded us of Samson’s riddle: “Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.”

22. THE MOVE TO CHESTERTOWN

Realizing that the educational opportunities were very limited in our town, Father frequently spoke of selling our farm and moving to some locality which had better schools. However, habit and the lure of our environment kept us where we were, and the routine of farming, fishing, trapping, and making maple sugar went on year after year. At one time we heard of a man who might pay as much as eight hundred dollars for our property, but this prospect faded away. Instead of seeing gold in our hills, he evidently saw only stones and hard work.

When my older sisters had gone as far as they could in our country school, they secured jobs as waitresses in hotels on Brant Lake and Schroon Lake during the summer months. Later they got more permanent positions as maids and housekeepers. Alice, the oldest girl, taught school for a few years, and then married at the age of twenty-six. Anna, who was two years younger, married a skillful young tanner. In order to get Father’s consent to the marriage, Anna’s fiancé, Anthony Schneider, had to promise not to drink intoxicating liquors or use tobacco. Later on this son-in-law and Father became great hunting and fishing pals. As my two brothers grew up, they also became more proficient at fishing and hunting, and I kept at their heels.

Following a natural urge to become a trapper I set a few traps, and succeeded in catching a small number of muskrats, mink, a raccoon, a fox, and a skunk. I did not like the task of killing animals in traps, and felt a special pity for the poor skunk, which I finally had to drown in order to keep myself from being unpleasantly perfumed.

The ability to handle a gun never became a fine art with me. Our old muzzle-loading shotgun kicked so mulishly that it made me somewhat fearful of all guns. Using Father’s famous pistol, I once shot at a deer which was standing a short distance from me, but my aim was evidently extremely poor and I missed. The only game that I succeeded in killing with a gun was one muskrat, and a partridge which obligingly refused to fly out of my path. A little later on, when I was firing at a red squirrel, the gun backfired on me, blackening my face with powder and making my ears ring for days. This experience caused me to lose all enthusiasm for wandering through the woods with a gun in my hands.

With the coming of spring, it was always difficult for me to sit studiously and contentedly in a schoolroom. The thought of the sweet maple-sugar season and the winding trout streams pulled me as persistently as the moon pulls the ocean water. However, as I grew older it was necessary to find employment beyond the pleasures of fishing, and so the summer I was sixteen I took a job as a handyman at the Palisade Hotel. Such tasks as filling the woodbox, washing dishes, sweeping floors and running errands were assigned to me. Not wanting to continue along these lines for the rest of my life, I began to think that if I studied bookkeeping I might be able to get a job in some village store. In the fall I returned to our little district school once more, and began to work out lessons in assets, liabilities, profit and loss. My program of training, however, was destined to come to a sad end.

On a dark day in late October 1898 someone came to the school to tell my younger sister Eliza and me that our mother had suddenly become critically ill, and that we should come home at once. Since Mother had prepared our breakfast and put up our lunch a few hours before, we were entirely unprepared for the distressing message about her; and to find her helpless and in great pain from a severe stroke was heartrending to us.

Until this time a physician had been called to our house only once, when Antha was so desperately sick. For all of our various illnesses, we had used oils, roots, barks and herbs, but now these were no help. We called a doctor from Chestertown, but in those horse-and-buggy days it took a long time for him to drive the twelve miles to our place. When he finally arrived, we watched silently and hopefully as he stirred his mysterious drops of liquid in a glass of water. A few days later another doctor from fifty miles away came to make a diagnosis and prescribe treatment. But our beloved mother was seriously stricken, and day after day seemed to lie on the very brink of eternity. In fact, one Sunday morning Father woke us to say that she was dying. This information was so disturbing to me that I rushed out of the house and down the road.

The road past our house was a lonesome one on a Sunday. At the gloomiest place where a dismal swamp was on one side and a protruding ledge on the other, I paced anxiously back and forth and prayed. I recalled a wonderful moment in my life when I had called Mother the most beautiful woman in the world; and I remember an occasion when my oldest brother had spoken sharply to Mother, causing her to weep. Her tears had touched his heart more than any form of punishment.

After quite a time my depression was completely removed, as though unseen hands had taken it from me. When I got back to the house, good news awaited me. Mother was very much better.

When she had recovered sufficiently from her stroke to be moved, my three older, unmarried sisters persuaded Father that a house with modern conveniences, and near a doctor, should be found. We decided on Chestertown, which was only twelve miles away, and which had a good school that Eliza and I could attend. Ruel chose to remain at the farm and to trap with Father, at least until the farm might be sold for a fair price.

Mother had a sister living in Chestertown, and since our married sister Alice lived only five miles to the east and no far from Brant Lake, we would all be quite near to each other. Therefore, a kind of second home was made.

Cordie soon secured a good position as cook at the Chester House, while Antha became housekeeper for a merchant and his invalid wife. Clara became homemaker. Eliza and I helped about the house as much as we could, and one of my jobs was to milk and care for the cow which Father had given us.

The school at Chestertown was not functioning at that time as high school, though it did offer some of the more advanced subjects, such as civics, physical geography, and rhetoric. Starting in at the second half of the school year, I began to pursue those subjects. I was a slow student, but had a fairly good memory. I concentrated on the Constitution of the United States until I could recite it word for word.

I remember that there was quite an attractive girl in my classes, and one day I must have been admiring her quite openly as she returned to her seat after a recitation. She saw me and rewarded me with a wink that set my heart fluttering. Later on in the year I invited her to be my partner at a skating party; and I held her hands—through mittens of course—as we circled about on the pond. Though I was then seventeen, I was too bashful and country-green to even think of a goodnight kiss.

23. TEACHING A COUNTRY SCHOOL

When the school year ended I went to work in a shirt factory which had recently been established at Chestertown. It was at that time possible for a skilled sewing-machine operator to earn as much as seven dollars a week, and I thought that I should be making some of this big money to help maintain our home. I was given a machine which sewed on buttons, but even when I became expert, I could not make more than five dollars a week. The job of attaching buttons to thirty dozen shirts a day became so tiresome that I decided to hire out to a farmer for work in a hayfield at a dollar a day. This work was exhausting also, but it was in the open, and I liked it better.

In the meantime, I had taken an examination to qualify as a third-grade district schoolteacher, and a notice was mailed to me during the summer stating that I was “entitled.” The next step was to find a school which had not yet hired a teacher for the fall term. I heard of two such schools, one in Grassville, and the other in Hayesburgh. As might be guessed from the names, these towns were in the hayseed belt. I had some misgivings about my acceptability to any trustee who had authority to engage a teacher, for I looked very boyish and would not reach the required age of eighteen until the twenty-fifth of November. I had begun to shave, however, so I neglected my sparse growth of hairs for a number of days, thinking that the slightest sign of a beard might make me look more impressive. Luck was with me, and I was hired for the Hayesburgh district at seven dollars per week, with no board provided.

I was quite elated at the thought of becoming a schoolmaster, although my spirits were somewhat dampened when I heard that the former teacher had found the school so unruly that she had had to resign before finishing her term. It seemed that there were big boys in the district who were hard to handle.

The school was six long miles from the village, so I bought a bicycle for the trips back and forth. This exercise cleared my brain after a day of teaching all of the fundamentals in Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, Spelling, History, English Grammar, Geography, and Physiology, but the pedaling was not so pleasant on rainy days or when a flat tire made it necessary for me to walk a good part of those six miles. The one reward along the way was a magnificent view of the higher Adirondack Mountains to the north.

When I had organized my pupils into classes I found them easy to manage, and could not understand why my predecessor had considered the Hayesburgh District difficult. I heard, however, that certain older boys and young men of the neighborhood were apt to visit the school and disrupt all order and discipline. They especially enjoyed teasing the girls and diverting their attention from studies. The ringleader of the gang was a strapping fellow who owned two pairs of boxing gloves and considered himself champion of the community.

Soon after the school term had started the gang put in an appearance, and, as might be expected, I was invited outside by the ringleader. As it was close to the noon hour, we went out into the yard to settle matters. I thought that first I would test his strength, and suggested that we try some athletic stunts which I knew. Standing face to face, we both gripped a broom handle and brought it down between us to see in whose hands it would turn. My hands held. We then sat on the ground with the soles of our shoes together, grasped the broomstick and each endeavored to pull the other up. My opponent had to come up each time. We wrestled Indian fashion, lying on our backs, with our heads in opposite directions and our right arms locked. We raised our right legs. Hooked them together and endeavored to flip each other over backwards. I won this bout also.

After the preliminaries, we donned the gloves for the big feature. Although I had never had on a pair of real boxing gloves, Ruel and I, using the sheepskin mittens Father made us, had frequently fought in the barn for the “championship of the world.” My heavier brother was John L. Sullivan while I was Jim Corbett. I knew nothing of their sparring tactics, but had heard of Corbett’s clever footwork; and my own feet, as a result of mountain climbing and crossing streams by jumping from stone to stone had become quite dependable.

My new challenger, who was heavier than I was and sturdily built, was clearly eager to prove his superiority and to humiliate me before my pupils. Aware that my peace and security as a schoolmaster were at stake, I determined to do my best—and to do it as quickly as possible. Yet apart from a source of strength which I may have inherited from Ethan Allen of the Green Mountain Boys, I can hardly account for what took place. We had been sparring only a short time when a shout rose from the ring of pupils around us: “The teacher has knocked him down!”

To this day I am not sure whether my blow did the trick or whether my opponent merely slipped and fell, since no blood was shed. In any case the fight was ended and the gloves were never brought to the school again. My status as teacher and disciplinarian was established once and for all.

***

A few weeks later a much more serious situation arose. Some of the children came running to the school to say that an enraged man had chased them and threatened them with a pitchfork. Upon inquiring, I learned that the man was a hermit named Tom Cardle who lived in a crude shack down in the valley. Ordinarily he was peaceful enough, but recently he had lost some hens, and had surmised that the cattle belonging to the parents of my pupils were responsible. Hence when he saw the children taking a short cut to school along the edge of his swamp, he went after them.

Further inquiry about Tom Cardle revealed a strange story. Earlier in his life Tom had worked at a lumber camp. At that time he was a big, blustery young fellow, fond of teasing and practical jokes. One afternoon, after the day’s work had been finished, the men found that they were out of tobacco. It was a long way out to a store. Someone bet a pound of tobacco that no one had the courage to go out of the woods so late in the afternoon and return after dark. Tom Cardle bragged that he was not afraid of any man or of the devil, and he volunteered to go after the tobacco.

On his way back through the lonely woods he heard the howl of a wolf. This was answered by a second howl coming from the opposite side of the trail. Then more howls indicated that a whole pack of wolves was closing in on him. Hard-hearted, courageous Tom began to run for his life. The shanty was only a mile or so ahead, and he hoped that he could make it before the wolves could reach him; but he had already caught a glimpse of a large gray form at his right, and he could hear a chorus of howls just behind. A bad fall on the rough trail brought him to the brink of despair, and he expected at any moment that the hungry beasts would pounce on him. However, for some reason the wolves seemed to be playing with him, as a cat plays with a mouse, for no attack came.

The package of tobacco slipped from Tom’s grasp when he stumbled to the earth, but he made no effort to feel around in the darkness for it. Regaining his feet, Cardle raced for the safety of the camp. Now it appeared that he might be saved, for he could see a faint light and dark shape of a building. In a moment he was at the door. He threw his weight against it so violently that the wooden latch broke in fragments, causing him to crash headlong onto the door. “Wolves! Wolves!” he cried.

The shanty was empty, but Tom heard voices outside and presently lumberjacks themselves appeared, laughing hilariously. Gradually it became clear to Tom Cardle that the pursuing wolves were only a hoax. Thinking to give Tom a bit of his own medicine, his friends had enjoyed an evening of fun, but it proved to be costly to their victim. From then on, the wild stare in Tom’s eyes indicated that something had gone wrong in his head. Some twist that could not be repaired.

When I heard the story of Tom Cardle, who was now a lonely old man, living in a swamp and harboring a grudge against my pupils, I realized that I should take steps to prevent further incidents. It seemed to me that some animal, such as a skunk or a raccoon, had carried away the man’s hens, and I decided to utilize my knowledge of trapping to solve the problem. The next day, having brought from home a steel trap, I ventured down to see the recluse. When I explained to Tom that I had come to help him, he appeared cooperative and took me to the place where his hens had their roost. He pointed out feathers on the ground and the tracks of cattle. The latter seemed to him to prove that cows had been responsible for the missing members of his flock. I suggested that some predatory animal might have taken his hens, and said that I would look around for proof. A pile of stumps near a little brook held the evidence for which I was looking. There was a hole under the decaying stumps, and in it lay the partly-eaten body of a chicken. Fastening the remaining portion of the chicken into some roots in the upper part of the cavity. I set the trap underneath and scattered dead grass and leaves over the shiny steel jaws and spring. Then I asked Cardle to look at the trap in the morning, and to kill whatever animal might be in it. He replied that he would use his ax to chop in pieces anything that might be caught. I tried to persuade him to be content with merely beating the animal on the head until it became lifeless.

The following day, as I approached the schoolhouse, I saw some boys out in the road holding up a large, dark mink. Early that morning the neighborhood had been awakened by the loud shouts of old Tom Cardle. When the boys went down to his house to learn the cause of the disturbance they had found the animal and the trap in the yard, and the house quiet. Tom, having discovered the animal, must have vented his wrath and gone back to bed to sleep in peace.

Since I had caught the mink on his property, we sold the pelt and bought some supplies for Tom. He seemed to understand that our intentions were good, for he never chased or threatened any of the pupils after that day.

For the remainder of the school year, things went smoothly and I was known as a schoolmaster who could not only defend himself, but also the pupils under his care.